The New PR: The Times Are A’Changin…

I just finished a wonderful article at MediaPost which gave me the biggest “I told you so!” moment. I could have written it myself because the stand this journalist takes is so on the money!

The article by journalist Vanessa Horwell talks about how people are so in the old school way of thinking when it comes to a new product launch – whether it be new books or services or whatever.  In this  article,  she says,

“I also feel that many marketers see PR people as old-school, or just not with the times — you know, stuck in a fax-a-million-press-releases-a-day-type thing.”

I have been over to the Zumaya group (yahoo group for authors published by Zumaya Publications of which I am published, also) all week long trying to explain to them what PR is all about from an online marketing standpoint and in my own experience with virtual book tours and other ways to promote your book.

One author emailed me offlist and she had some really good questions for me which I responded to.   But what kept her asking questions was the fact that she had been burned by a publicist recently who had just stopped cold turkey in returning her emails and calls.  She said she had paid this publicist good money, yet he couldn’t do a thing for her.

I asked her where he tried and she told me several offline places including newspapers.  I then told her that he sounded to me he was still in the old school mindset as he focused all of his efforts into offline opportunities which ended up turning out to be sour grapes, or rather, no grapes at all.

She wasn’t very happy with that.  She had paid him to publicize her book, but ended up with nothing and she wasn’t a very happy camper.

Here’s what she said:

“I work for a newspaper, and my suspicion is because there are tons of people sending press releases out all the time — including self-published authors. Heck, we once got dogged for a few weeks by a guy who hadn’t even finished a book yet who nonetheless wanted us to do an article. Sad thing is, my ex-publicist had friends at these places and told me it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.”

This is the very reason I decided my field was going to be online marketing.  I can still get my clients into such publications as USA Today, Chicago Times, Washington Post and even more huge publications just by using…the Internet.

The new PR is this…the dailys and the weeklies…they are bombarded by press releases by authors, publicists and publishers.  There are cut backs at these papers which makes it even harder to get in.  Why publicists don’t reach out to online venues is beyond me, or maybe a few of them have.  I know I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The times…they are a’changin…and it’s already begun.

My advice to new authors is this.  There are more than 200,000 books published each year.  Less than 2% sell more than 500 copies.  However, last Christmas even with the recession looming, 24 BILLION shopped online for their holiday purchases.

How many of you relied on publicists who were in the old mindset of PR and how many of you relied on publicists who used online methods to sell your book or you took it in your hands to do it yourself?  Let’s change those stats.  Let’s not allow ourselves to fall into that 2%, or better yet, let’s increase the odds and prove to the world how effective online marketing can be if used correctly (with correctly being the key buzz word here).

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